Dangerous to Know

I was a backer for this movie to be made as I believe David Simpson's other work needs to be seen. This movie is basically a proof of concept for his abilities, and they are many. If you want to make a cake from scratch you first have to invent the universe. David has done this in a genre away from his natural environment, sci-fi.

David at heart is a sci-fi writer and if you haven't read his Post Human series, you need to. They are brilliant and need to be made into a movie series. He made this movie to prove he can make movies so he may be able to turn Post Human into a movie series.

X-Men, Guardians, Avengers et-al have proved there is an audience for sci-fi. David's sci-fi is different though, read it and find out (available on Amazon)

Very few people could do what David has done here. I managed to see this movie as part of FrightFest 2020. Getting this movie made with so few people on such a small budget is an achievement and testament to his creative genius.

I found the movie enjoyable and tense. The twists and turns had me guessing at what came next. I found myself wrong at almost every turn which mildly infuriated me, but delighted me at the same time. I thought I knew David's writing style from his other work, but this was so creatively different, I was really pleased.

I watch a lot of movies and know that the IMDB rating can be taken with a grain of salt. Most movies get a 1 or a 10 on here and I find the movies that get lots of 1's are the ones I love. I love being able to figure things out and not have them spoon-fed to me with masses of exposition.

If you get a chance to see this movie, do it. Then make your own judgement. But remember most directors only get better with each movie they make! (if they get the chance to!)

Full disclosure: As a backer of the kick-starter and fan of David Simpson's books I am undoubtedly biased, however, knowing what I do of the project and team behind it I'm certain that they will appreciate my honesty...

Firstly, after reading the critics reviews so far I know that initial responses have been something of a mixed bag and probably not the kind of overwhelming 'smash hit' impact any writer / director / actor / editor / producer would hope for, that being said, and all things considered, this movie is an absolute phenomenon and deserves so much credit; the fact that it exists is a potential game changer for the industry and for content creators who have a vision and something to share but have had little access up to now..

My initial overall impression mirrored what I have subsequently read from several other sources; it was dominated by the sound-track which although fantastic in its composition, is unfortunately overbearing in its application and something of a distraction in scenes where the dialogue really needed to be brought to the fore.

However, knowing something about how the movie was made this is not entirely surprising; whereas scenes with beautiful block-buster quality cinematics have been achieved here on a relative shoe-string budged, compromises were inevitable; professional sound capture would perhaps have been perhaps a bridge too far for such a small team on such a small budget and post recorded sound was a necessary compromise (not uncommon for any movie but in this case I believe most if not all of the dialogue was captured in this way - no small feat!)

Another technical limitation is revealed in low-light scenes where the gorgeous cinematics we already know this director is capable of capturing are lacking, let's be fair and honest; this is down to technical and budgetary constraints alone, and while David and Jenny have done the best possible job of making the most of the low-light camera equipment available as well as post-processing, the darker scenes inevitably have a different quality to the well-lit scenes resulting in a slight disconnect between the two which somewhat disrupts the flow of the production as a whole

So far everything I've said about the sound and cinematics relates to areas which to my mind are actually a massive credit to this director and his small team; yes, the limitations of technology and budget are apparent, but when one considers that this entire movie was made on a budget of tens of thousands rather than millions what has been achieved here is staggering, and given just a (relatively) small bump up in budget (i.e. 6 figures rather than 5) I have no doubt that none of these issues would be factorings, higher end low-light cameras would have allowed David's obvious talent and vision for cinematics to have flowed seamlessly from start to finish, and had he been able to capture sound and dialogue to a higher level I feel he would have been confident to lower the soundtrack in certain moments..

Another criticism which has been raised is that the length of the movie isn't justified and that some of the dialogue is over long; while I will concede that some editing may improve the feature overall, I also feel that the sound and visual continuity which a bump in budged would bring could largely negate this criticism - where some seem to have seen pretension, I see the cinematic talent of a Kubrick partially obscured by nothing but technical constraints and limitations...

When one considers the catalogue of work of a director such as Peter Jackson prior to his being given the LOTR project, all I can say is *watch this space* because with this one incredible undertaking David Simpson has proven his credentials as a writer, director, (and even as an actor), and I predict that this will be the start of a significant career in movie making

It's quite difficult to write an in depth review of this without major spoilers. But it's a great movie, which keeps you guessing and feeling tense throughout. It is long, but it is necessary. There's a lot of twists and turns.

Now I've seen how it all plays out, I want to watch it again to see the first part in a new light.

Right from the start the sound design is horrible, a loud score stops you from hearing the characters, there's some horrendous dubbing that took me right out of the film, there's a scene where two guys are driving around and there's no sound of the car driving just the dubbed talking of these two guys.

I felt like I was watching this years The Room when watching this. Everyone feels like they are looking at their script when talking, there's too much cringy acting and to add all that into the runtime makes it painful to watch.

Someone needed to tell Simpson to cut 2 hours off this film because nobody wants to sit through how long this is.

First off, I can see what this movie was trying to do... but 180 minutes for a horror/thriller is wayyyyy too long! That being said, with some re-editing and some sound mixing this does have the potential to do well (and be under the 2hr mark)

The score is beautiful however, the sound can be overbearing making it hard to understand the dialogue. Less is more when it comes to sound for thrillers, the score is so constant that it feels like it is trying to force the audience how to feel rather than letting it breathe and allowing the audience to wait in suspense. Also, the ADR is a little sketchy at the beginning, but again, that could be fixed with sound mixing and editing.

It is a little dialogue heavy, but the actors are solid. The lead actress (Bridget Graham) is pretty and interesting to watch, but I was actually really impressed with the bad guy (Andrew Robert Wilson). I feel like the "psychos" rarely get credit in these movies, but for the amount of dialogue he had to deliver over the number of long monologues he had to say, he did keep my interest and was very impressive, I look forward to seeing him in more things.

Hats off to David Simpson (director, actor, composer, editor) for the many hats he wore in putting this together, it's clear that it was a passion project. I give this an 7 out of 10 because I can see what he was trying to pull off, however, I do think there is a solid and tight 100-120min intense thriller here just dying to come out.